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There are fears the crackdown against ‘outsiders’ is driving widespread persecution as expelled Indians are returned by Bangladesh border guards

The Indian government has been accused of illegally deporting Indian Muslims toBangladesh, prompting fears of an escalating campaign of persecution.

Thousands of people, largely Muslims suspected of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, have been rounded up by police acrossIndiain recent weeks, according to human rights groups, with many of them deprived of due legal process and sent over the border to neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Indian citizens are among those alleged to have been deported illegally, according to lawyers and accounts by deportees. Those who tried to resist being “pushed back” were threatened at gunpoint by India’s border security force, according to several accounts.

About 200 people have since been returned to India by Bangladeshi border guards after being found to be Indian citizens, with some forced to walk miles across treacherous terrain to get home.

“Instead of following due legal procedure, India is pushing mainly Muslims and low-income communities from their own country to Bangladesh without any consent,” said Taskin Fahmina, senior researcher at Bangladesh human rights organisation Odhikar. “This push by India is against national and international law.”

Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said it had written letters to the Indian authorities urging them to stop sending people over the border without consultation and vetting, as was previous official procedure, but they said those letters had gone unanswered.

Among those deported and returned was Hazera Khatun, 62, a physically disabled grandmother. Khatun’s daughter Jorina Begum said they had documents to prove two generations of her mother’s family had been born in India. “How can she be a Bangladeshi?” said Begum.

Khatun was picked up by police on 25 May and the next day was pushed into a van with 14 other Muslims who were then driven to the border with Bangladesh in the middle of the night. There, Khatun said officers from India’s Border Security Force (BSF) forced them to cross the border.

“They treated us like animals,” said Khatun. “We protested that we are Indians, why should we enter Bangladesh? But they threatened us with guns and said, ‘We will shoot you if you don’t go to the other side.’ After we heard four gunshots from the Indian side, we got very scared and quickly walked across the border.”

The group were taken into custody by Bangladesh’s border guards, and held in a makeshift camp in a field. However, Khatun said the authorities in Bangladesh would not allow the group to stay as their documents showed they were Indian citizens. They were driven a truck to the border and told to walk to India.

“When we returned, it was terrible,” said Khatun. “We had to walk through forests and rivers … We were so scared, we thought if the BSF officers found us coming back, they would kill us. I was sure we were going to die.” Eventually she made it back to her village on 31 May. According to her family, she was covered in bruises and deeply traumatised.

The escalating crackdown against so-called “illegal Bangladeshis” by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government comes in the wake of an attack by Islamist militants in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir in April whichkilled 25 Hindu tourists and a guide, after which the BJP government vowed to expel “outsiders”.

The mass detentions increased with the launch of Operation Sindhoor in May, when India launched strikes at neighbouring Muslim-majority Pakistan, which it blamed for the Kashmir militant attack and vowed to wipe out terror groups targeting India.

Over its 11 years in power,the BJP government has been accusedby rights groups and citizens of persecuting, harassing and disenfranchising the country’s 200 million Muslims as part of its Hindu nationalist agenda, charges the government denies.

The most widespread targeting and deporting of Muslims in recent weeks has been in the north-eastern state of Assam, as the BJP-run state government has escalated its long-running campaign against those it calls “infiltrators”. About 100 people who have been recently detained in the state are missing, according to activists.

The expulsions were described by activists as a worrying escalation of along-running exercisein Assam to expel “illegal infiltrators”, in which Muslims are routinely called before “foreigners tribunals”, quasi-judicial courts, to prove they were born in India, or arrived before 1971. Acontroversial citizenship surveyalso took place in the state in 2019, resulting in thousands being put into detention centres.

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Only Muslims have to prove their citizenship after Hindus, Sikhs and other religions were made exempt from the exercise by the state government.

This week, the hardline BJP chief minister of Assam, Himanta Sarma said it was now a policy of the state to automatically expel “illegal foreigners”. “This process will be intensified and expedited,” he said.

Not all those deported who claim to be Indian citizens have been able to return. Among those still stuck in Bangladesh is 67-year-old Maleka Begam,67, from Assam, who was detained by police on 25 May.

Speaking over the phone from a Bangladeshi border village in a state of distress, Begam – who is physically infirm and cannot walk unassisted – said she had been the only woman in a group of about 20 Muslims sent over to Bangladesh in the middle of the night on 27 May. She said they were ordered at gunpoint by the BSF to cross the border.

Begam’s son Imran Ali said his mother had documentation to prove she was born in India, and that all seven of her siblings also had proof. “Her deportation to Bangladesh is completely illegal. However, I cannot understand now how we can bring her back from Bangladesh. She is old and sick. We are very anxious about her,” said Ali.

Assam police and the BSF did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Hundreds of people, mostly Muslims, have also been deported from the capital, Delhi, as well as the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. In Gujarat, the police claimed to have detainedmore than 6,500suspected “Bangladeshi citizens”, and thousands were paraded through the streets, but it was later declared that only 450 of them were found to be illegal. Last week, Bangladesh’s border guards turned backfour Muslim menpicked up by police in Mumbai and deported, after it was found they were Indian migrant workers from the state of West Bengal.

Maj Gen Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui, director general of Border Guard Bangladesh, condemned India’s pushback policy as “a deviation from humane governance”.

“It contradicts international law and the dignity of the affected individuals,” said Siddiqui. “Acts such as abandoning people in forests, forcing women and children into rivers, or dumping stateless refugees at sea are not consistent with human rights principles.”

Army chief’s effusive welcome in Washington hints at strategic recalibration amid Middle East turmoil

After years in the diplomatic deep freeze, US-Pakistan ties appear to be quickly thawing, with Donald Trump’s effusive welcome for Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, signalling a possible major reset.

Once snubbed so badly that former prime minister Imran Khan had to board an ordinary airport shuttle after arriving in the US rather than being whisked off in a limousine,Pakistanis now enjoying top-level access in Washington, including a White House lunch for Munir on Wednesday and meetings with top national security officials.

Trump’s perceived friendliness with Munir, coupled with whatIndiaconsiders to be a glossing over of Pakistan’s record on terrorism, has raised Indian eyebrows, especially amid sensitive trade negotiations with the US.

In a phone call with Trump on Tuesday, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, strongly rejected the US president’s repeated claims that he had personally brokered peace in the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan in May.

The next day, while calling Modi a “fantastic man”, Trump described Munir as “extremely influential” in halting the brief but intense war. “I love Pakistan,” Trump said, before repeating: “I stopped the war between Pakistan and India.”

In the phone call, Modi made it “absolutely clear”, said India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, that hostilities ceased only after Pakistan requested a ceasefire, and that no third-party mediation took place. “India has not accepted mediation in the past and never will,” Misri said.

Adding to the confusion, a White House press officer said Munir had been invited after suggesting Trump be nominated for the Nobel peace prize for ending the conflict, which followed a terror attack that killed 26 mainly Hindu holidaymakers in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Munir’s red-carpet treatment in Washington and high praise from US Central Command hint at a strategic recalibration.

Gen Michael E Kurilla, the head of Central Command, recently called Pakistan a “phenomenal” counter-terrorism partner, citing Islamabad’s role in helping to capture the alleged Islamic State Khorasan Province planner behind the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul airport, an attack that killed 13 US troops and more than 170 Afghan civilians.

Munir’s five-day US tour includes meetings at the Pentagon, the state department, and Central Command headquarters in Florida. Such access is extraordinary for a Pakistani general.

“Senior US officials often meet with Pakistani generals. But they don’t get entertained at the White House,” noted Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based south Asia analyst. “Ayub Khan and Zia ul-Haq were exceptions but they came as heads of state.”

The shift in tone is stark. India has long positioned itself as the more reliable partner for the US as the world’s largest democracy, a bulwark against China, and a hub for expanding trade and intelligence-sharing. Pakistan, by contrast, has been dogged by accusations of sheltering terrorists and undermining civilian rule.

Just a few years ago, Trump himself accused Pakistan of offering “nothing but lies and deceit”. Joe Biden later called it “one of the most dangerous nations in the world”.

Indian officials continue to point to Pakistan’s links to major terror attacks, including on its parliament in 2001 and in Mumbai in 2008. Against that backdrop, Washington’s embrace of Munir strikes a jarring note in Delhi, where critics say the US is engaging with the same military establishment long accused of enabling cross-border militancy.

Analysts say the pivot may be driven by more than just strategic cooperation. For Trump, it could be personal. “He has a thing for strongmen,” said one US analyst.

“He sees something in Munir – the mystique, the military credentials, the aura of control. Trump responds to dominance, and Munir projects it.”

That may help to explain why Munir was granted access usually reserved for heads of state. “He probably relished the opportunity to size Munir up,” Kugelman said. “Trump knows that in Pakistan it’s the army chief who really runs the show.”

But Munir’s visit is taking place as the Middle East is in turmoil, with Israel striking Iranian targets and Iran firing missiles in retaliation. The US may be hoping that Pakistan, one of the few countries with diplomatic ties to Tehran, could play a role in de-escalation.

There’s also a more delicate calculation, with Israel pushing the US to join its military campaign against Iran, which shares a 900km border with Pakistan. That geography puts Islamabad in a pivotal position. Some analysts believe the US may be probing whether Munir would allow surveillance flights or logistical cooperation.

But Pakistan’s room for manoeuvre is limited, with public opinion strongly pro-Iran. “Even privately, Pakistan’s military would likely balk at the risks,” Kugelman said. “They can’t afford to be dragged into this. The backlash would be enormous.”

For Indian officials, Munir’s reception has revived old memories of the US tendency to tilt towards Pakistan at critical junctures, such as in the cold war moments or post-9/11. But this time, analysts say, the reset may also involve commercial opportunity.

Pakistan is actively courting US investment in two of the most volatile and potentially lucrative global commerce sectors: cryptocurrency and critical minerals.

“The Trump-Munir meeting shouldn’t be seen only through the lens of the Israel-Iran war,” Kugelman said. “There’s been US-Pakistan engagement on crypto, minerals and counter-terrorism, and Trump takes a deep personal interest in all of these.”

He added: “This is classic Trump: ‘What can you do for me? What can I get out of this?’”

Islamabad says US president helped resolve India conflict but critic says ‘Israel’s sugar daddy in Gaza’ not candidate for any prize

Pakistan has said it will recommendDonald Trumpfor the Nobel peace prize for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between India and Pakistan.

The move, announced on Saturday, came as the US president mullsjoining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“President Trump demonstrated great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi, which de-escalated a rapidly deteriorating situation,”Pakistansaid in a statement. “This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker.”

Governments can nominate people for theNobel peace prize. There was no immediate response from Washington. A spokesperson for the Indian government did not respond to a request for comment.

In May,a surprise announcementby Trump of a ceasefire brought an abrupt end to a four-day conflict between nuclear-armed foes India and Pakistan. Trump has since repeatedly said that he averted a nuclear war, saved millions of lives and grumbled that he got no credit for it.

Pakistan agrees that US diplomatic intervention ended the fighting, butIndiasays it was a bilateral agreement between the two militaries. In a phone call with Trump last week, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, had made it “absolutely clear” that hostilities ceased only after Pakistan requested a ceasefire, and that no third-party mediation had taken place, said India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump gave a long list of conflicts he said he had resolved, including India and Pakistan and the Abraham accords in his first term between Israel and some Muslim-majority countries.

He added: “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”

Pakistan’s move to nominate Trump camein the same weekits army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, met the US leader for lunch. It was the first time that a Pakistani military leader had been invited to the White House when a civilian government was in place in Islamabad.

Mushahid Hussain, a former chair of the senate defence committee in Pakistan’s parliament, suggested nominating Trump for the peace prize was justified.

“Trump is good for Pakistan,” he said. “If this panders to Trump’s ego, so be it. All the European leaders have been sucking up to him big time.”

But the move was not universally applauded in Pakistan, where Trump’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza has inflamed tensions.

“Israel’s sugar daddy in Gaza and cheerleader of its attacks on Iran isn’t a candidate for any prize,” said Talat Hussain, a prominent Pakistani television political talkshow host, in a post on X.

Israeli military chief says ‘difficult days’ ahead as salvo of ballistic missiles trigger air raid sirens across country

Israel’s military has warned of a “prolonged war” with Iran as the conflict entered its second week with no sign of stopping, as Israeli forces targeted Tehran and other areas while an Iranian missile attack wounded many people in the Mediterranean port city of Haifa.

The Israeli military said its aircraft destroyed Iranian surface-to-air missiles in southernIran, as well as killing a group of Iranian military commanders responsible for missile launches. According to the IDF, the strikes prevented launch of missiles scheduled for later on Friday evening.

Iran let off a rare mid-afternoon salvo of ballistic missiles across Israel, triggering air raid sirens across the entire country. At least one of the missiles evaded Israeli air defences, hitting an area by the docks of Haifa, wounding at least 45 people, 19 of whom were hospitalised. An Iranian missile also hit the southern city of Beersheba, where there were no injuries.

As fighting continued to escalate, the Israeli military chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, said Israelis must prepare for “difficult days” ahead.

He said on Friday: “To remove a threat of such magnitude, against such an enemy, we must be ready for a prolonged campaign. Day by day, our freedom to operate is expanding and the enemy’s is narrowing.”

Echoing the warning, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said: “We will not stop. Not until Iran’s nuclear threat is dismantled, not until its war machine is disarmed, not until our people and yours are safe.”

Speaking in Geneva where he was meeting his counterparts from the UK, France and Germany, the Iranian foreign minster, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran was determined to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty “with all force”.

But there was no sign of any breakthrough, and Araghchi said Iran would only consider a resumption of diplomacy with Washington if Israel halts its bombardment.

Late on Friday, Donald Trump said it was unlikely he would pressure Israel to scale back its offensive to allow negotiations, telling reporters: “I think it’s very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran.”

António Guterres urged all parties to “give peace a chance”. The UN secretary general said an expansion of the conflict “could ignite a fire that no one can control”.

Meanwhile, the UK said it had withdrawn embassy staff from Iran. Switzerland announced the closure of its embassy there.

The UK foreign ministry said: “Due to the current security situation, we have taken the precautionary measure to temporarily withdraw our UK staff from Iran. Our embassy continues to operate remotely.”

Countries have been working to evacuate their citizens from Israel, with the UK coordinating with Israeli authorities tocharter repatriation flightsonce Israeli airports reopen, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said on Friday.

The war started whenIsrael launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iranlast Friday morning, in what it said was an operation aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran quickly responded with a barrage of missiles and drones, triggering a tit-for-tat cycle of bombing between the two countries.

Israel knocked out much of Iran’s air defences in its initial wave of attacks and Israeli jets have operated with relative freedom over Iran. Iran has sent a steadily diminishing number of ballistic missiles into Israel and managed to get some past air defences,hitting a hospital in southern Israelon Thursday and injuring about 80 people.

Israeli bombing has killed at least 639 people and wounded 1,326, according to Iranian media, while Iranian missiles have killed at least 25 people and wounded hundreds in Israel.

Neighbouring states are concerned that an expanding war between Iran and Israel could have regional consequences, particularly if Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Yemen andLebanonget involved.

Iran has threatened that if the US joins Israel in its bombing campaign it would target US bases in the Middle East, which hosts thousands of US troops across at least eight different countries.

On Friday, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, told the Lebanese militiaHezbollahnot to get involved in fighting between Israel and Iran.

A western diplomatic source in the Middle East said: “The idea that if the US intervenes it will push all the proxies in the region to put it on fire, of course this is a scenario we need to take into account, but the whole [Iranian] axis is no longer the same.”

Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East are severely battered from two years of fighting with Israel and by thecollapse of the Syrian regime– a significant Iranian ally – in December.

The source said: “We are not worried more than we should be about what Qassem is saying. He’s just [saying] we’re not neutral and support in different ways. It would be suicide for them to get involved.”

Katz ordered the Israeli military to intensify strikes on Iranian government targets in Tehran, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij, an internal security force.

Israel also said it had struck a weapons research centre in Tehran that it said was used for the development of Iran’s nuclear weapons project.

Katz said the attacks were aimed at inducing “a mass evacuation of the population from Tehran, in order to destabilise the regime and increase deterrence in response to missile fire on Israel’s home front”. The Israeli military later announced it had hit the headquarters of the Basij.

A spokesperson from the Iranian health ministry said Israel had struck a hospital in Tehran, which they said was the third Iranian hospital to be attacked since fighting began.

An Iranian missile landed in Beersheba in southern Israel on Friday morning, lightly injuring seven people and damaging nearby homes. Iran said it had aimed the missiles at the nearby Dimona nuclear facility.

Araghchi met his European counterparts in Geneva on Friday in what the French foreign ministry said was an attempt to restart nuclear talks.

The US has flirted with the idea of joining Israel in its attacks on Iran. The White House said on Thursday that Trump would decidewhether or not to intervenewithin two weeks. The time period is reportedly to allow a window for diplomacy to take effect, with the US wanting Iran to completely abandon its nuclear programme.

Israel is keen for the US to jump into the fray, as only the US possesses the capacity to strike Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility, the Fordow uranium enrichment site, which lies up to 100 metres under a mountain near the Qom.

Privately, sources familiar with the deliberations for the US to intervene militarily in Iran have said Trump was also uncertainif the US’s most powerful bunker buster could indeed take out Fordow.

Araghchi said discussions with the US would be impossible “until Israeli aggression stops”.

The European diplomatic efforts were meant to jump-start US-Iranian discussions in order to avoid a US military intervention. They involved European states that, while opposed to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, favoured a ceasefire rather than a prolonged military conflict.

American involvement is not guaranteed to secure Israel’s objectives – and may lead to unintended consequences

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Israel’s assault on Iran, including its nuclear and ballistic weapons programme, is unlikely to secure its long-term strategic objectives, even if Benjamin Netanyahu manages to persuade theTrump administrationinto joining the conflict in the coming days and weeks, experts have said.

According to diplomats, military specialists and security analysts,Israel– and its prime minister – is likely to face mounting headwinds in the campaign, amid warnings that it risks dangerously destabilising the region.

There is mounting scepticism over whether even the US’s use of massive ground-penetrating bombs would be able to knock out Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, which is buried deep beneath a mountain, and questions have emerged about Israel’s ability to sustain a long-range offensive that has exposed its cities to counterattack by ballistic missiles.

Experts make the distinction between Israel’s operational success in targeting key Iranian sites and individuals, and its strategic objectives which appear to have expanded to regime change in Tehran, on top of destroying its nuclear programme.

“There is a dominant trend in Israel going back to the formation of the state that has suggested to politicians that violence will deliver a solution to what are political problems,” said Toby Dodge, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

“My gut feeling is Iranian regime is more stable than has been suggested. And because Iran has a long history of commitment to technological modernisation and proliferation, well, that’s something you can’t simply remove with a bomb.”

Analysts are also puzzled by an Israeli strategy that appears to have gambled on triggering a conflict in the hope of pushing a highly erratic US president inDonald Trumpto join, supplying the firepower that Israel lacks in terms of massive bunker-busting bombs.

Experts assess that the US would probably have to use several of these bombs, which would need to be dropped relatively close to the Fordow plant, protected by up to 90 metres of bedrock, in a complex and risky operation that is not guaranteed to succeed, and would probably draw retaliation from Iran against US bases, risking further escalation.

“Subcontracting the Fordow job would put the United States in Iran’s sights,” Daniel C Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel, and Steven N Simon, a veteran of the national security council, wrote in Foreign Affairs this week.

“Iran would almost certainly retaliate by killing American civilians. That, in turn, would compel the United States to reciprocate.

“Soon enough the only targets left for Washington to hit would be the Iranian regime’s leaders, and the United States would again go into the regime-change business – a business in which exceedingly few Americans want to be involved any longer.”

The prospect of regime change, perhaps by killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which has been raised by Israeli officials (and reportedly vetoed by Trump) is already causing profound alarm in the region.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior Iraqi cleric, made a rare intervention, warning of the profound dangers to the region.

Another sceptic is Andreas Krieg, an associate professor in the Department of Defence Studies at King’s College London, who has worked widely in the Middle East and is doubtful that air power can alone can make the kind of impact being sought by Israel, both in terms of destroying Iran’s nuclear knowhow or removing the clerical regime.

“It’s not the holy grail. We’d learned the lesson that air power alone doesn’t work. And then we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan that even massive numbers of boots on ground doesn’t work,” he said.

“What we’re seeing is not a strategic approach but one that is operational using air power, and the operational approach is starting the consume the strategic one which is about the political endgame.

“The best Israel can best can hope for is something like the campaign against Hezbollah, which has probably delivered a short-lived success, in that it was very successful in degrading Hezbollah’s network.

“Iran is very similar in that its defence strategy is built around a decentralised mosaic. Decapitation doesn’t work against that kind of network. You can take out key nodes, but the best [Israel] can hope for in killing Khamenei would be to trigger the succession crisis which in any case had been anticipated.”

And if Netanyahu has miscalculated, it is in an area where he has long claimed expertise: in reading and playingUS politics.

With American support for US intervention polling dismally, and the issue threatening to split Trump’s Maga movement, Israel may find itself on the wrong side of a toxic argument that has far more salience for Trump than helping Netanyahu.

Failing a US intervention to support Israel’s campaign, Israel is likely to face growing challenges amid indications it is running low on some missile interceptors.

Crew fatigue for the long-range sorties, aircraft maintenance cycles and the exhaustion of prepared target lists are all likely to militate against Israel’s ability to maintain a prolonged conflict at the current high level of intensity.

Any drop-off will be used by Tehran to suggest to Iranians that it has weathered the worst of the storm.

There is a third possibility. Writing in his book Waging Modern War, in the aftermath of the Nato air campaign in Kosovo in 1999 – seen as one of the more successful uses of air power – the organisation’s former supreme allied commander Wesley Clark, described the campaign as having one objective – to force the Serbs to the negotiating table.

With contacts now re-established with Iranian negotiators, including talks in Geneva on Friday with European countries, Trump himself has suggested there is more time for diplomacy to run.

Even if Iran is forced to a nuclear deal, Israel may find it comes with heavy hidden costs, not least the potential for survival of a clerical regime with every reason to be even more hostile to Israel and Israelis, and the limitations of Israeli military power, perhaps, exposed.

“If Khamenei has the sense to step back, if America doesn’t come in,” says Dodge, “then Israel has stuck its finger in a hornets’ nest.”

Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fallen in line with the US president – other war-sceptics are following

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The Trump administration is managing internal dissent over deliberations on whether to launch a strike againstIran, breaking what many supporters saw as a campaign pledge not to involve the US in new conflicts in the Middle East.

Trump for the second time this week disregarded testimony by his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, that Iran had not been seeking to build a nuclear weapon as of March this year.

“She’s wrong,” Trump said, then added: “My intelligence community is wrong.”

In a striking about-face, Gabbardlate on Fridaysaid her March testimony had been taken “out of context” by the media and claimed there was no difference between her opinion and Trump’s.

“The dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division,” she said in a post on X.

“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”

Gabbard wasnominated to her positionin large part because of her scepticism of the US intelligence community and its role in the US involvement in a series of “forever wars” in the Middle East, especially the Iraq war.

Her transition from Democrat to Trump supporter is indicative of the broad coalition that the president has united under his America First movement – and the potential for a schism as the US grows closer to launching an attack on Iran.

Steve Bannon, an influential adviser who has been critical of the potential for a US-Iran war, was seen having lunch at the White House with Trump this week, after a series of podcast episodes in which he and other popular Maga pundits criticised what they saw as preparations for a preemptive US strike against Iran.

Bannon came to lunch armed with talking points that the Iran strike would be a bad idea and the massive 30,000lb bunker-buster bombs that could target the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Fordow may not destroy the target.

The Guardian previously reported that Trump was not fully convinced the bombs would destroy the target, and has held off authorising strikes as he also awaits the possibility that the threat of US involvement would leadIranto talks.

Others close to the administration have pushed back forcefully in support of a strike on Iran.

Republican congressmen including Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton have lashed out against the isolationist wing of Trump’s support; the radio host Mark Levin has personally spoken with Trump in support of stronger backing for Israel; and other top members of the administration – including secretary of state Marco Rubio – are avowed Iran hawks.

Others, such as vice-president JD Vance, are public anti-interventionists but have limited their criticism of potential strikes to allow Trump the space to make a decision.

But Bannon is believed to have an outsized influence on Trump’s decision-making on the war. According to US media, he has warned the president he shouldn’t trust Israeli intelligence that the Iranian government was seeking a nuclear weapon imminently.

Others in the Maga wing of Trump’s support have sought to rebuild ties after sharply criticising the president’s positioning on the Israeli strikes against Iran. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, had called Trump earlier this week in order to apologise after blasting those advising Trump to launch strikes against Iran as “warmongers”.

“Tucker is a nice guy,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Wednesday. “He called and apologised the other day because he thought he said things that were a little bit too strong, and I appreciated that.”

Senior military figures targeted overnight as talks between Iran and Europe in Geneva end with no breakthrough

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Israel’s military has said it killed two top Iranian military officials in overnight strikes as European diplomatic efforts to bring the US and Iran back to the negotiating table stalled.

An Israeli military official said on Saturday that Saeed Izadi, the head of the Palestine Corps of al-Quds, the foreign branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had been killed in a strike on a flat in the city of Qom, centralIran.

The Israeli military said Izadi had played a key role in the financing and arming of Hamas before its attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

The official said Behnam Shahriyari, another senior official in al-Quds responsible for helping finance the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, had also been killed in a strike.

Iran did not acknowledge the deaths but said that four members of the IRGC had been killed, while Iranian media reported an Israeli strike on a building in Qom.

After talks between the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and European counterparts in Geneva ended on Friday evening with no breakthrough, Iran launched a salvo of missiles at Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning.

A building in central Israel caught fire after being hit by the shrapnel of an intercepted Iranian missile. Later on Saturday, a drone strike hit a residential building in north Israel, damaging the building. No casualties were reported from the missile barrage or the drone strike.

Araghchi’s meeting in Geneva had been aimed at reviving nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran in an attempt to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. The foreign ministers of the UK, Germany and France, along with the EU’s high representative, set out a proposal that included Iran moving to zero uranium enrichment, restrictions on its missile programme and ending Tehran’s financing of proxy groups.

Emmanuel Macron redoubled diplomatic efforts on Saturday, speaking with the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian. The French president emphasised that Iran must “never acquire nuclear weapons” and said talks should be expedited.

“I am convinced that a path exists to end war and avoid even greater dangers. To achieve this, we will accelerate the negotiations led by France and its European partners with Iran,” said Macron in a post on X.

But Iran seemed unimpressed by the European diplomatic initiative, with one senior Iranian official telling Reuters that zero uranium enrichment was a dead end and that it would not negotiate over its ballistic missile programme.

“In any case, Iran will review the European proposals in Tehran and present its responses in the next meeting,” the Iranian official said.

Speaking in Istanbul, Araghchi said it would be “very, very dangerous for everyone” if the US intervened militarily in Israel’s war with Iran.

Donald Trump has said thathe will decide within two weekswhether or not the US will join Israel in its bombing of Iran, saying he is waiting to give diplomacy a chance. On Saturday it was reported that the US is moving B-2 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam as Trump weighs possible strikes.

Earlier, Yemen’s Houthis said they would target US ships in the Red Sea if Washington became involved in attacks on Iran.

In May, the US and the Houthis agreed a ceasefire under which neither side would target the other.

The war began on 13 June after Israel launched a wave of pre-dawn strikes on Iran in what it said was an operation aimed at preventing the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran quickly responded with missile and drone attacks, kicking off an escalating cycle of tit-for-tat bombings that has now entered its ninth day.

In Iran, at least 430 people had been killed and 3,500 wounded by Israeli strikes since fighting began, state media said. At least 25 people have been killed and hundreds injured by Iranian strikes in Israel.

At root of the diplomatic impasse was Iran’s insistence that talks with the US were impossible under Israeli fire – and Israel’s refusal to halt its bombing, a stance bolstered by Washington.

“It is obvious that I can’t go to negotiations with the US when our people are under bombardments under the support of the US,” Araghchi told reporters in Istanbul, where he was attending a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

On Friday, Trump said: “Israel is doing well, in terms of war, and Iran … is doing less well. It’s a little bit hard to get somebody to stop.” He added that the US was “ready, willing and able” to negotiate and that it had been speaking to Iran.

European politicians have urged the use of diplomacy to reach a ceasefire, stressing that an expanded Israeli-US-Iran war could spiral out of control.

Vladimir Putin has said he is willing to mediate between Israel and Iran, thelatter of which is a close ally of the Kremlin. In an interview with Sky News Arabia on Saturday, the Russian president said Moscow was opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons but there was no evidence that Iran aimed to build any.

“We believe Iran has the right to use nuclear energy peacefully, and we are ready to help,” Putin said, echoing Iran’s insistence that its nuclear programme was meant for civilian purposes.

In a 31 May report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had produced enriched uranium to a level of 60%, which the nuclear watchdog said was of “serious concern”. US intelligence said Iran was up to three years away from producing a nuclear weapon.

Israel deployed 50 aircraft over Iran overnight, hitting the Isfahan nuclear site for the second time. Later in the day, large explosions were reported in the oil-producing region of Khuzestan in western Iran, as Israel’s military said that it was attacking “military infrastructure” in the area.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said in an interview on Saturday that its attacks had delayed Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb for at least “two or three years”, and that the Israeli military campaign would continue.

The US military is moving B-2 bombers from mainland US to the Pacific island of Guam, two US officials told Reuters on Saturday.

The New York Times furtherreportsthat the bombers, which have a range of over 6,000 nautical miles and a payload capacity of more than 40,000 pounds to carry various conventional and nuclear weapons, took off from Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri.

According toair traffic control communications, the bombers appear to be accompanied by refueling tankers.

The reported movement of the bombers come as Donald Trump deliberate on whether to militarily involve the US in the ongoing conflict between Iran andIsrael.

The White House has yet to confirm the movement of the bombers.

Adult websites back online after court suspended decision requiring platforms based in the EU to verify users’ ages

Major adult websites Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube were back online inFranceFriday after a court suspended a decision requiring pornographic platforms based in the European Union toverify users’ ages.

The three platforms’ owner, Aylo, based in Cyprus, had made its websites unavailable inFrancein early June as a protest against the French decree. Failure to comply could have lead to sanctions including fines or the blocking of the websites.

France has gradually introduced requirements this year for all adult websites to have users confirm their age with details such as a credit card or ID document. The aim is toprevent minors from accessing pornography.

But the Paris administrative tribunal on Monday suspended a government decree while investigating whether it was compatible with EU legislation. The French government has shared its intention to appeal to the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court.

Aylo said the decree’s suspension was an “opportunity to reconsider more efficient approaches” to age verification. The company argued that this was an ineffective mechanism that exposed people’s data to bad actors, hacks or leaks.

“Requiring you to repeatedly provide sensitive personal information creates an unacceptable security risk that we refuse to impose on our users,” the company said in a message displayed on the sites’ homepages earlier this month.

About 40% of children in France access porn sites every month, according to a 2024 study by France’s Arcom audiovisual watchdog.

In a bid to preserve privacy, the government decree also required operators to offer a third-party “double-blind” option that would prevent the platforms from seeing users’ identifying information.

Aylo, which reports seven million visitors in France daily across its various platforms, has called instead for governments to require makers of operating systems such as Apple, Microsoft and Google to verify users’ ages at the level of individual devices.

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The platform also argues that the French law “diverts users to thousands of sites that deliberately circumvent regulations” and fails to moderate videos for issues such as the age and consent of performers.

Other countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany also enforce age-related access restrictions to adult websites.

Residents of a Portuguese rural idyll where four vast mines are planned are among those who feel they will pay too high a cost for the energy transition

Filipe Gomes had been craving fresh air and quiet routine when he and his partner quit the chaos of London’s catering industry for the fog-misted hills of Covas do Barroso, the sleepy Portuguese farming village in which he was raised.

But his rural idyll has been disturbed by miners drilling boreholes as they push to dig four vast lithium mines right beside the village. The prospecting has sparked resistance from residents who fear the mines will foul the soil, drain the water and fill the air with the rumbling thunder of heavy trucks.

“They are destroying everything,” said Gomes, who runs the only cafe in the village with his partner. “They are taking our peace.”

Covas do Barroso is among the first villages caught up in Europe’s efforts to green its economy. As the continent weans itself off fossil fuels that poison the air and heat the planet, demand for lithium is surging, to build batteries that can run electric vehicles and balance renewable-heavy power grids.

Across Europe, people living near lithium deposits appear unconvinced that mines will bring good jobs and are unmoved by pleas to stop a bigger ecological threat. Attempts to push projects through in the face of local resistance have been met with cries of “colonialism”.

In Serbia, broad swathes of society have taken to the streets over the past year to protest against a lithium mine planned for the Jadar valley. In France, a lithium mine planned beneath a kaolin quarry in Allier has alarmed activists and divided residents. In Covas do Barroso, in northern Portugal, people say their village – at the heart of a heritage farming region recognised by theUnited Nations– has been turned into a “sacrifice zone”.

“You’re talking about destroying an area that has been classified as a globally important agricultural heritage site, an example of sustainability, an area with a system of water management that is at least over 500 years old,” said Catarina Alves Scarrott, a member of the protest group Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso (UDCB). “You’re going to sacrifice all of this for open-pit mines. And then, you start to ask: for what?”

The answer, for EU officials and the Portuguese government, is to obtain a soft white metal that is needed to stop burning fuels that make extreme weather dramatically worse – and do so without relying exclusively on foreign suppliers. Europe produces almost no lithium itself. More than three-quarters of the world’s raw supply comes from just three countries: Australia, Chile and China. The latter dominates the refined supply of lithium too.

Anxious about energy security and scrambling to get more mines dug at home, the European Commission set a target last year of meeting 10% of demand for critical raw materials from domestic sources by 2030. In March, it listed the planned mine in Covas as one of 47 strategic mineral projects that would benefit from “coordinated support” to become operational. The decision is being challenged by MiningWatchPortugal, ClientEarth and UDCB, which lodged a complaint with the commission in June.

Environmental concerns about waste and water are not the only factors that have left communities such as Covas wary of prospectors. Kwasi Ampofo, a metals and mining analyst at BloombergNEF, said the sales pitch had been made harder by the mining industry’s historically poor reputation for safety and the lack of skilled domestic labour forces to profit from the work.

“It’s going to be very hard for the EU to develop primary sources of lithium domestically,” he said. “Not impossible, but very hard.”

In Covas, the long-running struggle between villagers and miners has intensified as political support for the project has grown. The Portuguese environment ministry granted the British mining company Savannah Resources a one-year “administrative easement” in December that allows it to prospect in the land around Covas. The villagers filed an injunction that held up the process, but the ministry quickly allowed work to resume, arguing it was in the public interest.

People in the village, where a tattered banner declares “no to the mine, yes to life”, say they feel misled by the miners and betrayed by the government. They accuse the company of trespassing on land it does not own – much of which is held in common ownership – and downplaying the nature and scale of the project. But opinions in the surrounding Boticas region are mixed, with some hopeful the project will boost a neglected rural economy.

Savannah Resources declined to comment. It has previously told local media it is acting within the law and makes efforts to keep people informed. It projects the mine will produce enough lithium for half a million EV batteries a year and describes itself as “enabling Europe’s energy transition”.

But the continent-wide resistance to lithium mining reveals a snag thatgreen groupsand mining companies alike have been reluctant to acknowledge. While surveys find vast public support for stronger climate action – as much as80-89%, according to a project by the Guardian and newsrooms around the world – the infrastructure for a carbon-free economy carries trade-offs that affected communities are often reluctant to bear.

Some residents of Covas, which is itselfthreatened by wildfires and droughts, say they recognise the tension, even if they consider the costs too great.

“Every village faced with a mine will say ‘no, no, no’, I get that,” said Jorge Esteves, a forestry worker. “But what’s different here is the proximity to our homes.”

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Gomes, the cafe owner, said he would also have fought an oilwell if someone had tried to drill one in Covas.

“I don’t agree with that either, though I have a car – but that’s already happening,” he said. “We do need to find a solution, but what we are doing now is not a solution.”

Studies have shown that a societal shift away from private cars – such as creating walkable cities with good public transport – would greatlylimit the risein demand for lithium, as would halting the surge in SUVs that need big batteries.

Analysts note there are also significant quantities of lithium in electronic waste such as phones and laptops that do not get recycled. For the lithium that does need to be extracted, harvesting it from brine does less damage to the environment than mining it from rocks.

But with 250m combustion engine cars on EU roads and next to no lithium produced at home, electrifying vehicle fleets without domestic sources of lithium would still mean extracting more abroad. Analysts fear this would largely take place in regions with weaker environment and human rights laws.

“It’s not necessarily a dilemma with no exit, but it’s a real one,” said Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College who visited Covas and several others mining regions when writing a book about lithium extraction.

Mines were most likely to face resistance from people when developers failed to include them in the decision-making process, she added.

“It’s not the environmental risks or the water risks on their own – if they’re not combined with a sense of exclusion, then oftentimes those don’t in and of themselves cause protests,” she said. “It’s the harm combined with the lack of voice to be able to say something about that harm.”

In the green hills of Covas, it is unclear whether a friendlier approach by Savannah and the authorities would have won people over or simply tempered their rage. But the anger at the process is palpable.

“The biggest shock initially was not even the impact of the mine,” said Alves Scarrott, who grew up in Covas and moved to London. “It’s the attack on democracy, and democratic processes, and the rights of the people that live there.”